Laird Hamilton Standup Paddle Surfing Hanalei.MP4

Oh, come on, man, I’ll be your Doug, Torn Slatterns and Nugget Ranchers

A man in Arizona discharged his girlfriend’s tiny carnation-colored hand gun in his trousers and shot trough his genitalia. In other words, a pink pistol in his pants popped a cap in his pee-pee.

The good news is he is fine. The better news is the New York Giants are going to sign him.

In New Jersey, they arrested a woman working at Dunkin’ Donuts who was doubling as a prostitute. She charged extra for Long John’s, if you know what I mean.

61-year-old marathon swimmer, Diana Nyad, tried to swim 100 miles from Cuba to Miami, but she quit halfway through. So her coach must be Sarah Palin.

She survived the sharks, jelly fish and stingrays, but, in the end, the five Cuban refugees standing on her back were simply too much.

What a whimp, she could only swim 50 miles in the open ocean. After driving 50 miles, I need to stop at a Starbucks and rest.

A man in Arizona shot himself when he stuffed his girlfriend’s pink pistol in his pants. Remember how former Giant, Plaxico Burress, shot himself in the leg when he stuffed a gun in his pants? This Arizona guy actually Plaxico’d himself in his Burress.

Since you asked:
As always, I’ve told this story before (when did you turn into that sad, lonely old guy chatting everyone up at the Laundromat?) Shut up, inner tirade.

So I am watching my beloved Cubbies at 6 pm, Virg, my wife, comes rushing in to the house after going to get the mail - which I always do, this had to be the first time in five years she got it when I was around - and shouts:

“Our neighbor’s water heater is on fire.”

This gets my attention, so I run outside. In the open garage – they never leave their garage door open – I see it wasn’t the water heater, it is a cabinet and there is a huge three foot ball of fire on top of it lapping at the garage ceiling. I run 10 yards away and grab a carton of big Pure Flow bottled waters just then deposited on our driveway and start dousing them on the flames. Six bottles later the fire is out and smoking. There were literally great balls of fire rolling on the ground the size of soccer balls.

Turns out they had installed a spot light above the cabinet, stowed a huge package of CostCo toilet paper in front of it, turned on the light when they left and the giant package of toilet paper caught fire. The balls were the rolls of toilet paper. It wasn’t hard to put out paper, but the wall was about to go up. Got a few first degree burns on my wrists and hands, but nothing bad.

We call the fire department and then Virg goes and gets the hose from our garage and instructs me to hose down the smoldering wall in case the fire wants to start up again. Now I am thinking what if there is an exposed wire? Dropping the bottles on the fire I was not connected, but if I was holding a hose that hit raw electricity, I was thinking I could get electrocuted.

Virg essentially scoffs at me for being a whimp and tells me to spray the black, smokey wall . (Notice she didn’t offer to spray the wall?”)

So I spray the wall and the smoking stops. The fire truck shows up, San Diego’s finest look at the fire damage on the wall and the guy inspecting called me to come over. He showed me where the fire was just about to go inside the wall where it connected at the ceiling.

“One more quarter inch and this fire goes inside. You saved this house, no question.”

The firefighters shook my hand. My eyes watered up I was so moved.

“We’re supposed to tell people to wait and call us” said a younger woman firefighter, “but in this case it was damn good you didn’t.”

The woman of the house, Nancy, drives up and is in total shock. Told her not to worry and what happened and she was relieved. There are no nicer people on the planet than our neighbors, Mike and Nancy. It was a pure honor to be able to help them. The smoke damage was so extensive they had to have their garage re-walled.

After, Virg wandered over to a group of concerned neighbors to tell them what happened. Too modest to want to accept their praise, I went back inside to my Cubs game.

Along with some quick action, there was some amazing coincidences. One, I always get the mail, if I had, Virg wouldn’t have seen the fire. Two, the water was delivered moments before. Three, they left their garage door open and they never have before, or Virg would not have seen it.

The next day, one by one, our neighbors came by to see what happened. As they greeted me, they all said the exact same thing:

“Good thing Virginia put out that fire.”

Now, I did not want a parade nor a medal, but telling someone to put out a fire – which Virg no doubt did – and actually putting the fire out with water, are too very different things.

Not to Virg.